Rebirth
by Zurizip
Summary: (Finished? Thats weird.) Born into Paradise, Kiba feels complete, but confused. Why does he feel as if the world is as it should be, even with the death and the pain? In the Lunar flower lies the answer…
1. Walking in the Rain

**Funny, I was expecting a plot bunny for Witch Hunter Robin to bite me before Wolf's Rain. Thats ok though, this will be a fun fic to write, and I hope you enjoy reading it as well. I loved the ending to Wolf's Rain; it was open to interpretation, and since I just got done with a religion class, finding an interp to take wasn't all that hard.**

"Ah, so there's trouble in paradise, eh?"

The boy stiffened up, stopping in his tracks by the chess playing grounds in the local park.

"Yeah, but when isn't there trouble in somebody's paradise? I'm not the first, and I won't be the last to find it and lose it in the same breath."

Kiba turned to stare at the men playing chess, breath stilled in his lungs. Something in his heart hearkened to what these men were saying, and it all had started with the word 'paradise'. He had heard the word before, it was everywhere. People strove to make their own little paradises within themselves, or their little corner of the world; and every company was out to help them do it, for a price.

"Wise words my friend. Have you tried flowers? Work's wonders, ya know."

"Nah. I'm not sure I deserve paradise, Qwent, you know? Maybe men just weren't meant to have it."

Why was this so deeply meaningful to him? He knew that the man was speaking of nothing more than a marriage, or a relationship gone wrong. But it felt like if he dug deep enough, if he peeled enough layers from the initial meaning, he could figure it out. It seemed they were done, as the man called Qwent moved his last piece into position and sat back, a smug smile on his face.

"Mate, Hubb. Sorry, but I beat you again."

In disbelief, the man surveyed the board thoroughly until he had determined that the trap he'd been caught in could not be slipped out of. "Fine, fine," he grumbled, grabbing his coat and hat. "You always win anyway."

"You've got to learn to stalk the prey, be patient enough and learn how to detect the enemy." Qwent chuckled. "Be good advice for you're wife, too."

"Oh be quiet."

Kiba shoved his hands back in his pockets, feeling even more confused then he'd been when he started his walk. His life had felt rather strange of late, as if he'd seen something else. The other day, he'd caught a glance of the sunset, as the sky flared it's brightest, setting off all of the fireworks that it could before allowing the moon and stars to take their places. He'd stood on the building of his apartment complex, watching the sun sink into the horizon, and nearly wept at its beauty. It was strange; he normally was not so emotional. When he'd tried to describe it to someone, a complete stranger on the train, the woman had told him that it was his teenaged hormones, and that he'd get over it. Mood swings are a bitch, she'd said, take it from a lady.

He had no question about the bitch qualities of mood swings. But this wasn't a feeling that came and went. Something tugged at his heart, nestled in his throat. Even while staring at the news that came from halfway across the world, of death, and destruction; terrorists and wars and mass graves from long ago being exhumed, all he'd have to do was catch a breeze in his hair, and everything was all right.

He hadn't told anyone that; afraid that they would call him heartless or uncaring. He _cared_ but something in his soul made him believe that things evened out in the end. For every evil there was a good; for every disaster a miracle.

No matter how many times he told himself this, though, that the world was right as it was, he still felt…out of place. Like he was the only one that saw this rightness, alone in being content with the world as it was. Alone in feeling that this was…paradise, in a quiet, sort of unobtrusive way. An old woman selling flowers had stopped him on the street one day, seeming to sense his displacement. He still remembered the conversation.

"You are the lone wolf."

He had been very surprised. Certainly, he'd been called a lone wolf before, but never by a stranger.

"Er…"

The woman had smiled and taken a small satchel from the back of her stand, pressing it into his numb hands. "Here, take this, Kiba. They are lunar flowers; they bring luck to those who can grow them."

"I was never…uh…very good with plants…" he had mumbled at the time, dumbfounded until his mind scrambled for an explanation. His name was embroidered into his jacket on the sleeve; she must have seen that; though she had never taken her eyes off his face.

"Never mind that. You're spirit will grow them, and they will keep this paradise we call earth moving a little smoother." She shooed him away. "Just water them, and save the seeds. You will see, they will bloom into the most beautiful flowers you've seen."

He was abruptly brought back to the present as a motorcyclist nearly ran into him.

"Hey!" cried the man, wearing more leather than he had any right to in high summer. "Why don't you come out of your daydream and keep your head on the ground!?"

Kiba sidestepped the man, staring. An X-shaped scar stood out pale on his otherwise tan chest. Not wanting to cause any trouble, he muttered an apology, averting his eyes, and hurried the rest of the way across the street, head slipping back into it's thoughts. That had been nearly four weeks ago, and the flower had been sitting on a bud for three days now. He had a feeling it was going to bloom today.

He again came back to reality as a shoulder met his. Gasping, he turned to find a boy about his age dressed in a dilapidated yellow hoodie, his hair mussed, eyes seeming to express confusion as to why his forward momentum had suddenly been altered. "Sorry." He muttered.

"Hey, no problem!" the boy said, and took a large bite out the sandwich he held in his hand. Kiba nodded and continued on, starting to jog in anticipation. Something about seeing the flower excited him; he was very curious.

When he reached his single room dorm, he found nothing. The bud still sat, plump but not inclined to open. Kiba sighed and sat down, slumping against the wall, staring listlessly out the window. The second floor apartment was a perfect spot for people watching. In the rain that had started to fall, someone had set out a box, filled with three fluffy kittens. Kiba sighed; he hated it when people did that. A boy seemed to have taken to them though, crouching near them and picking them up, mewling, one at a time. Kiba smiled, watching the boy hold the umbrella over the box as he played with the young cats, his eyes slowly drifting shut.

**There, your first chapter. I don't expect this to be too terribly long, maybe one or two more chapters. Yes, the similarity to the ending of the last episode is intentional (how could it not be?)**

**Please review, even just to put a smiley face to let me know I've go readers!**


	2. Petal

**Well…despite the pathetic amount of reviews; I continued. This plot won't stop bothering me- I suppose playing the Wolf's Rain music doesn't help matter either. So I am going to exorcise it by getting it down.**

**And you're all coming along for the ride. Warning, it may be a tad Emo, but oh well. Cheers!**

When Kiba's eyes opened, the rain had stopped, replacing a grey rainy day with a grey foggy day. Groggily, he lifted his head from the back of the chair, shaking out his arm as if tingled back to life, none too pleased with his head for cutting off it's circulation. He ignored it though, looking at the pot that held the flower, searching for any signs of blooming. There were none. Maybe, he thought, it bloomed while I was asleep. No, he probably would have smelled it, or something; it was only a foot away from him. That notion gone, a great fear that he had killed it somehow took over him. It had been entrusted to him, had he killed it?

That was ridiculous though. He'd watered it, and everything. So when was it going to bloom? It had been sitting on a bloom for four days now! Checking the clock, he saw that it was well past time to go on his delivery run. He grabbed a coat and hurried out the door, glancing one last time at the flower before going to get his bike and start the day.

The feeling of deep connection to the world had grown. He felt as if…he knew something. Something that everyone else didn't. Like there was a secret to the world that everyone else had missed. As he swerved to avoid a car stuck in traffic, he swore to himself. His mind was going in circles over this feeling. Tiny voices in his heart sang joyful tunes as the world around him seemed to fall apart.

It was just a phase, he thought to himself decidedly as he sat down to eat his lunch, maybe the full moon was getting to him. He'd heard medical reports on the news that the full moon really did have an affect on people; it wasn't just pagan mumbo jumbo. Wild, he thought to himself, people probably dance under it and howl like wolves, just because they can. He smirked. Like wolves. Lone wolves like him didn't howl, except to themselves.

"Hige!" A voice said to his right, sounding overjoyed. A dark haired woman threw herself at a strangely familiar boy in front of him, her face reflecting pure joy.

"Blue! I didn't know if you'd be there, but I thought I'd try."

"I tried to tell you I'd wait!"

"Sorry, I didn't hear you."

"That's all right, you're here now, and so am I."

Kiba smiled when the boy, whom he recognized as the one from running into him the other day, wrapped his arms around the girl and buried his face in her hair, pressing his lips to her temple. "That's right, we're both here. How's pops?"

"He's fine. Plays chess and drinks too much, but I can't do much to stop him." The girl said. She went on, but Kiba had stopped listening, preoccupied with another familiar face. It was the boy from across the street the day before. And he was tagging along after a man all in leather, like a lost little puppy.

"I'm sorry! He needed help!" He sighed heavily as the man ignored him pointedly. "Tsume!"

"You were always too kind for your own good, kid." The man said, not looking at him as he kept walking. Kiba smiled, heart silently agreeing. He didn't know how he knew, but he knew that the boy was a naturally kind soul; if a little naive. He frowned. How did he know? It wasn't seeing him with the cats; he knew on a deeper level.

_This has been a weird few weeks. _ He thought to himself, rising. First the old woman just handing him a packet of seeds, then he felt he knew people that he just randomly saw on the street, and then that flower seemed determined not to bloom. He sighed; maybe this was normal for flowers. Checking his watch, he realized that his break was over; he had to get back to work. Contemplating the oddities of his life would have to wait until he got done with work.

He got home, head still reeling from the familiarity of it all. Climbing the stairs to his apartment, he tried to place the faces of the people he had seen that afternoon. They were all so…so familiar. His surrogate father would have told him that he was bound to them by magic. He had always respected the man who had taken care of him while he was young, but that was just weird. Magic didn't exist in this world, it was all science. Evolution, chemistry, physics. Even though they didn't have flying cars for everyone in the world, they still had gone to the moon fifty years ago.

This was different though. This was…well, it was the human mind, a human soul. He suspected that no matter what, science would never be able to shape a soul; even if they learned how to clone a body. With those thoughts in mind, he wondered if it was possible that on some level, he did know those people. None of them had appeared to recognize him, but he had given them no reason to. The girl and the boy; he wondered if they had felt the same when they met; as if they knew each other.

He shook his head, suddenly feeling foolish. _Get your head out of the clouds, Kiba._ Certainly it was possible; but dwelling on it would only give him a headache. Said headache had all ready set in though, as he unlocked his door and dropped his things on the wooden floor. The flower was the first thing to meet his eyes. He gasped.

It was drooping, the stem so sagged that the bud was nearly touching the soil of the small pot. His heart seized up as one large petal drifted slowly to the floor. Had he killed it? He desperately hoped not as he frantically checked the soil to see if it was dry. It was cool and damp; Kiba rather thought that if he were a plant he'd like to live in just such conditions.

_Yes, but you'd never take to being cooped up all day long…_his mind told him, and he knew it was right. Maybe that was it. He'd told the truth, he was not at all knowledgeable about plants and their habits; maybe it just needed some fresh air. He tugged on the window, opening it and placing the flower on it. There was no breeze; no movement in the air. Kiba sighed. He had things to do; maybe the wind would pick up in that time and the plant would revive. Picking the forlorn petal up from the floor, he placed it in the pot. It looked ghostly against the dark soil; the whole flower looked almost sad, like it had lost a comrade when the petal fell.

Kiba allowed himself a moment to reflect on the dropping of the petal, and then turned on his heel, grabbing his laundry bag and change. If he didn't do it tonight, he'd never get it done. It was six o'clock. He would be back by eight. How much could happen in two hours?

**All right. One more chapter. I hope you liked this one. Please review!**


	3. Moon

**Dude. I finished this? WTF?**

**It's a bit trippy, way too much abstract imagery and metaphors, but I figure I'll post it for all you bored folks out there.**

It was on the edge on true night when he got home. The sky was all deep blues; a touch of pink on the horizon with the city's lights tinting the light clouds in the sky a fluorescent orange. He began to haul his laundry up the stairs, cursing the elevator for being temperamental. The whole time his clothes had been spinning in the washer, and then in the dryer, his mind had simply not come off of the flower. He knew it was ineffably beautiful. Or at least, it would be when if finally bloomed. He couldn't conjure up an image of it. If someone had asked him how he knew it would be beautiful, he could not have answered. An old woman in the Laundromat had smiled at him, her old eyes crinkling at the corners when she realized he had felt her gaze.

"Dreaming about that special someone, young man?" she asked.

Kiba shifted uncomfortably. "No, not exactly."

And artfully lifted eyebrow had met his plea of innocence. "Don't try to fool an old woman. You love her." She smiled again at his bewildered look. After all, who could possibly be love a flower? "Don't worry; it will work out in the end, and be all the more beautiful for it."

"Um…thank you." Kiba said, not sure how else to get her to stop than to acquiesce and go back to his thinking.

Now as he lugged up the stairs, he wondered if he had really had such a look on his face as to let someone believe that he was thinking of a significant other. He had no significant other, hadn't ever, really. Well, there had been her…

He shied away from the thought. She had been beautiful, more than he'd ever thought to have, but in the end they had been too different. She was content with where she was; content to stay where she was. Kiba was restless, always looking for…what?

What had kept him from staying there, with her? He had been happier with her than any other time in his life; why had he left?

For this, he had no answer. He had loved her, for certain. He did not think he loved her now. In fact, this was the first he had thought of her almost since he had taken his leave. The thought pained him somewhat, she had been a bright spot in his life, but it was true none the less - and he knew it. He also knew that there was no regret in his heart for leaving. He never would have come here then, and he never would have seen those people, or that sunset, or…

Or gotten the flower. The thought of the flower spurred him up the remainder of the steps and to his room. He quickly unlocked the door and went in, eyes drawn immediately to the window where it sat.

His face fell. It had improved, but only marginally. What could be it's problem? He knew the dirt was still moist, and he'd put it in the window…

But as he stood by, he realized that there was no air actually coming in to the room. The breeze was barely moving the discarded trash on the street; it could not come in to the stuffy room.

For the first time, he wished he had a place where he could put things outside. A porch, heck, even a good windowsill would be helpful in this case. All he had was the roof.

The roof. The thought hit him like a ton of bricks. Of course; he could put it on the roof; that would probably help. It was a full moon tonight too; he could go up with it and watch the city maybe actually read that handbook that his manager had given him.

"I can't sleep any more anyway," he said to the plant, as if it could hear him. It seemed to rustle in reply, though he thought he felt a whisper of wind along with it. "I guess going up to the roof wouldn't be such a bad idea." He smirked. "We could both get some fresh air."

_I must be tired, or mad, or something._ He thought to himself as he gathered the pot in his arms, _taking a plant to the roof, as if it were company or something._

He sighed. The plant rustled in his warm breath. He grabbed the thick manual and locked the door behind them, rather, him.

The stairs to the roof were short, and soon he was shoving the door open, grunting with effort. It seemed to be stuck. As soon as he stepped from its shadow though, it became apparent that the difficulty was from the wind that had eerily sprung up. It punched at him, forcing him to hunch over to protect himself from the falling dust. He curled the flower under him, but none the less, one petal came off, and then another, spiraling in to the air together.

He looked over the edge, feeling strangely torn. The two petals danced in the wind, whirling around and around each other until they dropped to the street, following behind two people walking on the sidewalk like ghosts. He turned from the edge, eyes set on the flower. There was only one outer petal left. He hoped that it would not begin to shed it's inner petals. Perhaps the ones that had just dropped were…outer husks, things meant to protect the flower?

He didn't know. Worried, he lightly prodded the last petal, silently pleading for it to stay on. But with the faintest touch of it's hand, it dropped off, shivering into his hand. He looked at it numbly. Had he killed it?

What if the whole flower died because of him? Maybe he hadn't done enough for it, protected it, kept it safe… he probably should have taken it outside. That had been stupid, the wind was cold, there was nothing but moonlight out here. He turned to look at the orb, hanging low and bright in the sky, drowning out even the city lights with it's brilliance. And as the light shone on him, the flower moved.

He gasped, afraid that another petal would fall. But instead, the flower began to unfurl, white petals rolling slowly open like flags in a spring breeze. But there was no breeze now. He stared in wonder at the opening of the flower, and somewhere, in the back of his mind, he felt that he had seen this beauty before…somewhere…

A scent rose from the bloom, intoxicating his senses. He closed his eyes, gripping the pot and swaying to unheard music. Something about this… the moon -_light all around them, burying itself in their rough pelts-, _the melody in his mind –_notes dropping like molten silver from her mouth, soothing their hurts with song-, _the scent –_that scent which drew them together like moths to light, which gave them hope, lead them to her, drowned them in it's lovliness…-_

"Cheza…" the name rolled from his throat like fire, as if it had lain dormant for thousands of years. He opened his eyes, and the wind blew again, stealing the name from his lips and mind. He blinked. Something had happened… what had he whispered? A name, something about it sweet and foreign at the same time. Looking up for the moon again he realized with a start that he had been standing outside for much longer than he had thought – the stars had wheeled halfway around the sky and the moon was completely gone.

His eyes went immediately to the flower. It was fully open, reaching it's feathery petals up to what little starlight remained. Reaching out a finger, he brushed the flower, surprised at its softness. His jacket was wet with dew – it was nearing dawn. He turned to watch the sun rise, anxious to see the flower under sunlight.

But as the first rays broke through the city to touch him, something changed again. He looked closer. The petals were…vibrating, shaking off water…shriveling. He caught his breath, how was it happening so quickly? Before his eyes, the petals dried, and soon when he touched it, the flower felt like a bundle of dry leaves.

He was just about to go downstairs and find water, when, suddenly, the flower fell apart. He shouted in surprise, hand automatically moving to try and catch the swirling petals, to save them, keep them with him…but they floated away on the breeze, twirling together in a whirlwind that whispered his name.

He watched the flower go, hand still reached out. Then he lowered his arm, bowing his head over the pot which still held the stem. His breath caught. Still attached was one lone petal sticking out at a strange angle. It was anchored to the base of the flower by a small seed… and as he looked at the base, he thought he made out the silhouette of a wolf, tail straight out behind him, running against the wind.

He smiled and plucked the seed from it's base, picking the empty stem from the soil and placing it reverently on the cement of the roof. Then he lovingly planted the seed. Standing up, he looked around, staring across the cityscape with a heart full of strange pride.

He still didn't understand the world. He didn't need to. But there was something _right _about this place, and nothing could change that. As long as the lunar flower bloomed, the world would continue.

And even if it was only up to him, the lunar flower would keep blooming.

**And thus, Zuri ended her contacts with the Wolf's Rain fandom. I guess this story just wanted to be finished and I'm between chapters on another story, so I thought I'd go for it.**


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